All eyes on the sun — and its spots

Last November, I wrote that our sun was waking up from its minimum cycle. During the late 2000s through the 2010s, sunspot activity was very low. There were long stretches when there were no sunspots reported.

In fact, during 2008-09, NASA reported that the sun was in a “deep solar minimum” as there were no sunspots for 266 days in 2008. More recently, in 2020, there were 28 straight days with no sunspots despite moving into the new maxima cycle.

Sunspots are storms on the sun. During the height of a cycle, its magnetic poles will usually flip as the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice-versa. The last solar cycle, which was number 24, began in late 2008 and ended in late 2019.

We’re now in Solar Cycle 25, and the sun’s behavior has changed dramatically. According to SpaceWeatherLive, an organization that observes solar activity, our closest star erupted every day in February. Solar flares were seen being ejected from the sun and some have been strong.

In February, there were three powerful solar flares that were the second-most powerful, which are called M-class flares. There was another M-class fare on Jan. 29 that literally took 40 recently landed Starlink satellites out of orbit.

In early March, the sun pushed out another M-class flare, which indicates that our sun may be heading toward one of the most active maxima cycles in history.

The worst type of solar flare is the X-class. Last month, it’s likely that the sun did eject an X-class flare, but it was on the other side, not facing the Earth. If one of the X-class solar flares were to directly hit our planet, then we would likely experience another “Carrington Event.”

However, some scientists say there's only a 10-15 percent chance of a solar superstorm hitting Earth in the near future. There was a huge solar storm in July 2012 that narrowly missed our planet and this maxima cycle is not expected to peak until the middle of 2025.

Now, about Carrington.

The most spectacular super solar flare was witnessed by England’s foremost solar astronomer, Richard Carrington, on Sept. 1-2, 1859. He first noticed a huge group of sunspots on Sept. 1 and then described “two patches of intensely bright and white light erupting from the sunspots” before they disappeared.

On that September night, tremendous auroras of red, green and purple erupted across Earth. The auroras were so brilliant that one could read a newspaper at night. They could be seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.

The auroras were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners in the Rocky Mountains. Telegraph systems all over North America and Europe stopped working and some generated sparks and fires.

Many scientists say that if that type of event were to happen today, the world’s high-tech infrastructure, which includes major satellites, would be severely damaged and perhaps be brought to a halt. Damage estimates from a Carrington-type event today could reach $2.5 trillion or more.

LOCAL OUTLOOK

In terms of our local weather, it’s the case of more wide weather extremes. Since Jan. 8, only 6.5 inches of snow has been measured at Cliff’s station in northwestern Coeur d’Alene. According to his records, that is the lowest period of snowfall since records began in 1895. The old record was 8.8 inches in 1929.

There has never been an instance where we’ve started the snowfall season with over 50 inches by the end of December and have barely received any snow in the first three months of the following year.

At least we’re getting some moisture, but the majority has been rain, especially in the lower elevations. Despite the milder weather in recent weeks, snow depths in the mountains are ranging from close to 80 inches at Silver Mountain to over 110 inches at Lookout Pass.

While moisture totals are still good across the Inland Northwest, I’m constantly being asked by my relatives in California when the skies will open up and bring some much-needed rainfall. Based on the long-range computer models, it’s not looking very promising for big rains in that region. In fact, moisture totals for Northern California are expected to be on the light side over at least the next several weeks with very little or no rain expected in the central and southern part of the state.

Cliff and I see more storms for the Inland Northwest through the end of the month. However, most of the moisture will likely come as rain in the lower elevations. There’s still a chance that some of these storms will bring snow to Coeur d’Alene and surrounding regions, but it’s going to be very tough to reach our seasonal normal of 69.8 inches.

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Contact Randy Mann at randy@longrangeweather.com